Payam Heydari: Introducing the Design of Millimeter-Wave Integrated Circuits to the World

With the goal of harnessing the untapped potential of Iranian-Americans, and to build the capacity of the Iranian diaspora in effecting positive change in the U.S. and around the world, the Iranian Americans’ Contributions Project (IACP) has launched a series of interviews that explore the personal and professional backgrounds of prominent Iranian-Americans who have made seminal contributions to their fields of endeavour. We examine lives and journeys that have led to significant achievements in the worlds of science, technology, finance, medicine, law, the arts and numerous other endeavors. Our latest interviewee is Payam Heydari .

Payam Heydari is currently a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California Irvine. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees with Honors in Electrical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology in 1992 and 1995, respectively. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California in 2001. Dr. Heydari’s research covers the design of terahertz/millimeter-wave/RF and analog integrated circuits. He is the (co)-author of two books, one book chapter, and more than 140 journal and conference papers. He gave the keynote speech at the IEEE GlobalSIP 2013 Symposium on Millimeter Wave Imaging and Communications, served as Invited Distinguished Speaker at the 2014 IEEE Midwest Symp. on Circuits and Systems, and gave a tutorial at the 2017 International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC). He was a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society from Jan. 2014 until Jan. 2016. His group was among the first in the world to introduce the design of millimeter-wave integrated circuits in silicon process. They demonstrated the world’s first fundamental frequency CMOS transceiver operating above 200 GHz and the world’s highest frequency synthesizer in silicon at 300 GHz. For his pioneering contribution to millimeter-wave integrated circuits design, he became a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The Orange County Business Council named Dr. Heydari as a “Game Changer” at this year’s annual dinner, attended by more than 700 business leaders in February 2018.

Dr. Heydari is the recipient of numerous awards and recognition, including the 2016–2017 UCI’s School of Engineering Mid-Career Excellence in Research, the 2014 Distinguished Engineering Educator Award from Orange County Engineering Council, the 2009 Business Plan Competition First Place Prize Award and Best Concept Paper Award both from Paul Merage School of Business at UC-Irvine, the 2010 Faculty of the Year Award from UC-Irvine’s Engineering Student Council (ECS), the 2009 School of Engineering Best Faculty Research Award, the 2007 IEEE Circuits and Systems Society Guillemin-Cauer Award, the 2005 IEEE Circuits and Systems Society Darlington Award, the 2005 National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award, the 2005 Henry Samueli School of Engineering Teaching Excellence Award, the Best Paper Award at the 2000 IEEE Int’l Conference on Computer Design (ICCD), and the 2001 Technical Excellence Award from the Association of Professors and Scholars of Iranian Heritage (APSIH). He was recognized as the 2004 Outstanding Faculty in the EECS Department of the University of California, Irvine. His research on novel low-power multi-purpose multi-antenna RF front-ends received the Low-Power Design Contest Award at the 2008 IEEE Int’l Symposium on Low-Power Electronics and Design (ISLPED).

Tell our readers where you grew up and walk us through your background. How did your family and surroundings influence you in your formative years?

My background entails lots of ups and downs, making it a colorful life story. I grew up in a lower middle-class family in Tehran, Iran. Due to lack of financial backing, my father, who grew up in a poor village in the suburban area of a western city called Zanjan, was only able to finish primary school education. Nevertheless, he was, and still is, a very hardworking and family-oriented person with great conscious about doing the right thing and having an authentic attitude in life. After he got married to my mother, he had to take two full-time jobs for more than 30 years to be able to support his family. As a result, the circumstances were not there for me to build a deep and intimate relationship with him.

My mother was a visionary woman who was very influential in instilling a love for math and physics in me. She had a larger than life personality who inspired me by her caring and her powerful character. I never forget the moment when I was 9 years old and she had bought a big encyclopedia for me and kept encouraging me to raise my knowledge by reading different parts of this book. I still remember her saying to me that she wishes I get the best education from one of the top U.S. institutions, such as Harvard, in the future. Unfortunately, she was diagnosed with brain cancer at the age of 29, and soon after she passed away at the age of 32. I was 9 years old when that happened. Her passing had a deep impact on me and reshaped my viewpoint for the rest of my life to a great extent.

Looking back now, right after her death, I think I subconsciously built a “me-against-the-world” attitude. This phenomenon has also been well documented in Malcolm Gladwell’s recent book David and Goliath. He in this book states that “the death of a mother or father is a spur, a propellant that sends the children catapulting into life. Because they are on their own, they are forced to persist, to invent, to chart their own way.” My response to this event and all other incidents happening afterwards was: “I will show you.” And that “you” was anyone and anything doubting me and my capabilities depending on circumstances. For example, the fact that my mother wished for me to be great in higher education, math, and physics created this very powerful drive for me be the number one student in all of my classes. And amazingly, this driving force helped me to always be ranked first in all of my primary and high-school classes.

This attitude also helped me successfully pass the nationwide entrance exam, become top ranked in this exam, and enter the Sharif University of Technology. I received my B.S. degree in electronics there. Afterwards, I took the nationwide M.S. entrance exam and was ranked number one and chose Communications as my specialty. Towards the end of my M.S. degree, I seriously thought about applying to top U.S. universities to continue my post-graduate studies. Finally, I got admission with financial support from the University of Southern California (USC), and came to the U.S. as a Ph.D. student in August 1996.

This Ph.D. admission opened the doorway for me to fulfill my dream of continuing my graduate studies. It is appropriate to thank my former circuits instructor John Choma (who passed away in 2015) as well as my former Ph.D. advisor, Massoud Pedram, who trusted my abilities and provided guidance during my Ph.D. studies at USC. I received my Ph.D. in 2001 and immediately after I became a faculty member at the University of California, Irvine. Within 4 years, I became a tenured associate professor, and in 2010 I became a full professor of electrical engineering. During these sixteen years, I have had the opportunity to supervise excellent Ph.D. students from all walks of life and coming from the best universities across the globe. Thanks to their hard-work, my research group received several international awards and recognitions. We have been one of the first research groups in the world that introduced the design of millimeter-wave integrated circuits in silicon process. This effort has led to the recent explosion of interest in 5G wireless and deployment of millimeter-wave technologies in 5G standard.

You received a number of awards and honors for your research, scholarship and patents. What were the significant accomplishments that led to these?

The biggest factor, in my opinion, that led to these awards and recognitions was my obsession with exploring creative and elegant solutions to the problems I was interested in tackling. Another feature that can be found in my research endeavors during the past 20 years since I started my Ph.D., and thereafter when I became a professor, was to have the courage to reinvent myself and my research every five to six years and to have this unrelenting perseverance to work hard and find groundbreaking solutions to these unexplored problems.

What has been your personal key to success? What were the biggest inspirations for your career?

As I pointed out, I think my life circumstances created this attitude in me to work hard, have the courage and conviction in my ability to overcome great challenges in my field and my life. Particularly, when I was younger, I never accepted no for an answer to any challenge. As a result, I found few examples in my life that I turned a seemingly bitter event to an ultimate success. I was inspired by seeing my father’s hard work to provide necessary help to his family. The memory of my mother and her wishes for me and my well-being have always been, and continue to be, my greatest motivation.

I have always been greatly fascinated by all those individuals who became leaders in their own ways, regardless of their field and specialty. At the professional level, I have closely followed and read several books about the life of three giants; James Clarke Maxwell, Carl Friedrich Gauss, and Isaac Newton. Other individuals whom I have admired are: Steve Jobs, because part of his early childhood and his reaction to his difficult circumstances (e.g., abandonment) was interestingly similar to the approaches I adopted early on in my own life; Michael Jordan for his never ever stopping of being excellent and becoming the best possible player he can be; Mohammad Ali for having the courage to stay truth to himself. As I grew older, I also studied the life of people who made a difference in others’ lives on the social aspect. I became fascinated by the life of Rumi, Martin Luther King and Gandhi for their quest of transforming themselves and others.

Your research interests cover the design of terahertz/millimeter-wave/RF and analog integrated circuits Can you share some highlights of your work in these areas?

My current research interest covers the design and implementation of novel of terahertz, millimeter-wave, and radio-frequency integrated circuits. Operation at high frequencies has enabled great applications and single-handedly unfolded many new possibilities in high-tech industry. To begin with, these great advances in information technology during the past 20 years, not seen any other field or human activity, was due to the fact that devices and electronic gadgets can process and handle more and more information at a much faster rate. In the area of wireless and wired communications, users’ demand for real-time access to all the different kinds of information including data, video or the new explosion of internet of things (IoT) have all made possible because of the availability of devices and circuits can operate faster and can handle information with wider bandwidths. In life sciences and the medical field, the early stage prognosis of diseases is essential. The medical imaging devices and instruments working at high frequencies such as MRI and CT have revolutionized the medical field. Simply put, new discoveries in the medical science are impossible without the use of high sensitivity electronic circuits and systems.

You have designed and implemented the world’s highest radiated power, highest efficiency, and lowest noise radiator-on-chip, which has promise to revolutionize imaging and sensing. Could you tell our readers more about this project?

We have discovered a revolutionary idea that uses an on-chip cavity with multi-port excitation to realize a radiating element with highest radiated power, highest efficiency and the best possible performance among all the previously reported integrated radiating elements in the world. The underlying idea behind such amazing performance is that this integrated radiator concurrently acts as a resonator, a power combiner and an antenna, thereby avoiding the usual multi-chip setups using coupling networks and antenna buffers. In addition, using this circuit creates circularly polarized emissions that outperform linearly polarized signals by tolerating loose antenna and receiver alignments

what is the use of such groundbreaking invention?

This system-on-chip radiator that could serve as the emitter element for a handheld medical diagnostic unit that the doctor merely passes over the patient’s body to perform diagnoses in the manner of Dr. McCoy of the Star-Trek franchise. This radiator has the potential to achieve application-quality performance, such as the medical scanner that distinguishes normal versus malignant internal organs (by sending its output up to the cloud where analytics produce real-time diagnoses). Moreover, it can do a lot more than facilitate scanning and imaging. It could be the key that unlocks millimeter-wave transmission and radiation as part of the fifth-generation wireless standard now in development. In addition, the tiny yet powerful chips can be embedded virtually anywhere. The internet of things will rely heavily on machines, buildings and other infrastructure being equipped with sensors and antennae. Driverless vehicles will only be possible if cars and trucks can detect each other using advanced radar technologies.

You led, as the lead principle investigator, a research team from UCI, USC, and Caltech whose grand vision is to develop a bi-directional brain-computer interface to enable walking and leg sensation for patients with spinal cord injury. This interdisciplinary research was awarded $8 million dollars from the National Science Foundation. This initiative represents the largest NSF award ever received by a faculty in the UCI engineering. Could you elaborate on this?

The National Science Foundation has awarded $8 million to a consortium led by the University of California, Irvine to develop a brain-computer interface that can restore walking ability and sensation in individuals with spinal cord injury. This initiative represents the largest NSF award received by faculty researchers in the UCI engineering and medicine schools. The goal of this multidisciplinary project is to create an implantable system that by circumventing the damaged portion of the spinal cord can enable patients with these injuries to regain feeling in their legs and walk again.

Spinal cord injuries are devastating and have a profoundly negative impact on the independence and quality of life of those affected. These resulting disabilities cost the U.S. roughly $50 billion per year in primary and secondary healthcare expenditures, so we hope that our work can solve a major national public health problem. I am leading this five-year grant, sponsored by the NSF’s Cyber-Physical Systems Frontier program, and collaborate with researchers from the University of California, Irvine, California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and USC to develop this revolutionary brain computer interface. This new initiative will focus on converting existing technology into a fully implantable version which will implemented in a manner similar to deep brain stimulators. To test the technology, the UCI team led by my group will collaborate with Caltech and USC on clinical studies in volunteers with spinal cord injury. Since these systems are fully implantable, they will be inconspicuous, work around the clock and access much stronger brain signals, facilitating highly accurate control of movement.

Could you please identify a couple of other researches that you value as of high importance produced by you?

I have been blessed to work with outstanding individuals. In fact, 26 outstanding students have received their Ph.D. under my supervision. Among them, I can name Dr. Amin Safarian, who is currently an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at Sharif University of technology; Dr. Vipul Jain, who is a Senior Director at Anokiwave Corporation; Dr. Amin Jahanian, who is a Manager at Qualcomm; Dr. Zhiming Chen, who is an Associate Professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology; Dr. Zheng Wang, who is a Full Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Electronics Science and Technology in China; Dr. Pei-Yuan Chiang, who is a millimeter-wave circuit designer at Samsung Electronics; and Dr. Peyman Nazari, who is a Senior Staff Scientist at Qualcomm.

What is the biggest challenge you have overcome in your career?

The biggest challenge in my career is to learn, study, and make pioneering contributions to new fields of knowledge, while competing with other researchers and scientists in the field. In particular, establishing a research group fresh out of school as an Assistant Professor was challenging. Fortunately, with hard-work and laser-focus dedication, I was able to create an environment in my research group so that aspiring young Ph.D. students were able to flourish and contribute to state-of-the-art research. This is obviously an ongoing effort to be the best possible individual I could be.

In your view, what is the biggest challenge with which your field is currently grappling?

The great investments in the high-tech sector have resulted in astonishing advances in our field with direct impact on public life. It is unimaginable even 10 years ago some of these latest developments in our field from technologies in automotive applications to high data-rate communications. This fierce competition and widespread dissemination of know-hows, while creating a very stimulating environment, also made new fields obsolete rather quickly. This means that to stay relevant one should constantly refresh him- or herself be able to find new areas and unexplored research areas.

At the same time, the R&D investment in the U.S. is currently going through a phase of great uncertainty. In fact, innovation coming from research intuitions was and still is the major driving force of the U.S. economy. However, the investment on innovation in science and engineering is no longer considered to be the highest priority in the U.S. This happens while countries such as China invest great amounts of money and brain power in engineering and science. Obviously, a slow-down in research expenditure gradually leads to the inability to find and support young Ph.D. students.

Since you have a PhD in electrical engineering, can you address the relationship between academia and industry in your field? How can their relationship be optimized?

Electrical Engineering, in general, and micro- and nano-electronics, in particular, have been at the forefront of transforming information and digital technologies. The inherent aspect of this field involving design, implementation, and measurement of the circuits enabling the ideas has attracted close and fruitful collaboration between academia and industry. Many start-up companies that eventually became giants in our field such as Broadcom and Qualcomm started by faculty members and their graduate students. This provides an evidence about a strong relationship between the R&D in our field and companies that later on contributed significantly to the U.S. economy. This relationship and the ecosystem enabling the startups to either going through large company acquisition or directly becoming a publicly traded company still continues to this date.

Can you share your thoughts on your Iranian-American identity? What does it mean to be an Iranian-American to you?

The Iranian American community is considered to be a rather young minority group in the U.S. The migration of top students and highly successful individuals from Iran to the U.S. made them a successful immigrant group in this country. There are growing numbers of scientists, engineers, medical science professionals, and entrepreneurs who are of Iranian origins. This notion, in itself, obviously provides great feeling for any Iranian-American expatriate. However, perhaps this group is still facing some challenges to become a cohesive group. In fact, a widely-held and persistent opinion among Iranian-Americans is “while individually we are successful but as a group we have not yet been able to make an impact.” Some people go even further by saying that the Iranian American community is fragmented.

While there might be some truth to the above viewpoints, it does not have to stay this way forever. The good news is that I think Iranian-Americans, especially the newer generation who have settled here during the past 25 years, have come to realize that forming a strong and vibrant group with strong voice and great social presence can benefit the entire community, as a whole.